Senior Data Engineer (Search Platform) (m/f/x)

About usWe’re Cortea, a Berlin startup transforming audits with AI. Manual, document-heavy audits waste expert time; we automate the repetitive parts so experts focus on judgment. Backed by top-tier VCs with €10m+ funding, live product, paying customers. We value first-principles thinking, speed, trust, and kindness. We build side by side in our Berlin office. Your RoleOwn search at Cortea. You’ll design and ship retrieval, ranking, and evaluation systems that power our AI agents. You’ll also build the data pipelines behind them. You’ll work closely with product, design, and founders to turn messy, real-world documents into precise answers. What you’ll doBuild and tune retrieval and ranking: lexical + neuralOwn evaluation: datasets, metrics, dashboards, and regressionsDesign data pipelines for ingestion, enrichment, and classificationShip production code: Python services, APIs, SQL models, testsImprove relevance through experimentation and systematic analysis Qualifications5+ years as a software engineer or applied scientist with hands-on information retrieval workData engineering experienceIR fundamentals: BM25, TF-IDF, and neural retrievalEvaluation: comfortable with NDCG, MRR, Precision@K and when to use eachData & software: Python (asyncio, type hints, pandas) and strong SQL (modeling, window functions, CTEs, optimization)Production APIs: design, implementation, and maintenanceBonus: Ranking systems (learning-to-rank, re-ranking), distributed compute (Spark, Ray, Temporal), search engines (Elasticsearch/OpenSearch), data warehouses (BigQuery, Snowflake), or post-training LMs for retrieval/ranking No one checks every box. If you’ve shipped retrieval systems and like owning evaluations and pipelines, let’s talk. What we offerHigh impact & growth: Shape strategy at a scaling AI startup from day oneMission-driven culture: Ambitious team valuing first-principles thinking and bold ideasCompetitive compensation: €80-€120k salary plus significant equityPersonal development: Learning budget for courses and conferencesStartup perks: Flexible vacation, team lunches, retreats, central Berlin office Interview processFirst Call — Intro to Cortea with our Founders Associate LeonSecond Call — Technical interview with RinoThird Call — Deep dive into our culture with PhilippOn-site Half-Day (Berlin) — Meet the team and work on a real problem together We’re an equal-opportunity team and encourage women and underrepresented groups to apply.